Curatorial tour of the exhibition
Tour guides: Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew and Gabi Skrzypczak
Polish Sign Language (PJM) interpretation provided
LGBT+ Zones. Queer Art in the Times of the Good Change
Municipal Gallery Arsenał in Poznań
30 May – 31 August 2025
Participating artists: Ania Nowak, Bart Staszewski, Biblioteka Azyl, Daniel Kotowski, Daniel Rycharski, Edna Baud, Filip Kijowski, Filipka Rutkowska, Karol Radziszewski, Kacper Szalecki, KEM, Kinga Michalska and Sarah Chouinard-Poirier, Liliana Zeic, Małgorzata Mycek, Mikołaj Sobczak, Olga Dziubak, Piniak Przemysław, pozqueer, Sebulec, Sergey Shabohin, Slamka, X-Philes, Queer Archives Institute
The largest institutional review of queer art of the past decade – a voice of resistance, memory and community
The exhibition LGBT+ Zones. Queer Art in the Times of the Good Change at the Municipal Gallery Arsenał is the most comprehensive presentation of queer art in Poland since 2010.
The exhibition showcases the works of 24 individual artists and collectives, creators of some of the most expressive and socially engaged pieces in Poland’s contemporary visual art scene. The project focuses on the years 2015–2023, not only in the context of the Law and Justice (PiS) government – a period that brought severe social deterioration and numerous acts of hatred against the LGBTQIAP+ community – but also of intense activism, solidarity and cultural transformation. The exhibition is being presented at a special moment – the year in which Poland takes over the presidency of the Council of the European Union. It becomes a testimony not only to oppression, but above all to strength, endurance and collective resistance.
The curators – Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew and Gabi Skrzypczak, along with Andrzej Pakuła, the curator of the performance programme – have built a narrative around the titular “zones”, which guide visitors through the complex contexts of queer creativity: from documentation of hate campaigns and forms of artistic protest, to self-organisation, strategies of representation and self-advocacy, deconstruction of national myths, and the performance of new communities and identities.